First snowflakes…..and the race towards Christmas is on…

Okay. It’s snowed already in northern Michigan but I just saw my first snowflakes “downstate” today.

The “Christmas Creep” is behind us. (am I the only one that finds this term is odd – like someone spotted a wino in a Santa suit wandering the neighborhood? just saying…) Black Friday looms ahead with the news featuring commentary about Thanksgiving Day being huge for retailers, dubbing it “Brown Thursday in recent years. Who are these people that leap away from a sumptuous holiday dinner, grab their credit cards and drive to the mall? I adore Thanksgiving – it’s a tie with Christmas as my favorite holiday. I labor over a massive trough of sausage, apple and roasted chestnut stuffing – made from scratch in the days leading up to Thanksgiving. My fingertips bear the nicks and cuts from scoring, roasting and peeling those chestnuts but it’s all worth it when we sit down and savor those first bites. I prepare my Cran-Orange relish and prepare an herb compound butter to massage under the skin of my turkey as if I were on the Food Network. I make pie and set the table with Grandma’s china and candles. It is a labor of love.

While the meal is cooking, I begin decorating and it starts looking Christmas-y. Spence puts in a crackling fire and food smells emanate from the kitchen making us salivate. It feels festive and all is right with the world. Spence “supervises” and critiques my placement of Christmas ornaments and tree lights from his vantage point in the recliner. We watch our favorite Thanksgiving-themed movies, “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and “Grumpy Old Men” (classics – both of them). And I’ll admit it, we’ve been known to lapse into turkey induced comas. More than once. But never have we said “hey now that dinner’s over, grab the car keys and let’s go shopping!” Just seems wrong. But then that’s the thing about traditions, we all have our own. I just felt compelled to give a shout-out to Thanksgiving as we race towards Christmas.

And even though the cat in the picture above looks just like Biscotti, it’s not him. Just a picture that made me smile and inspired this post.